Playing with Fractals

Fractal Recursions is one of those visually delicious sites where eye candy becomes the main course. It's also one more stunning example of the art-math-play connection.

There are 30 different galleries of fractal images. My favorites, however, can be found in the small, but sweet collection of animated images. When you think you've seen everything there is to see, fractal-wise, click you way to "Sprott's Fractal Gallery" - another remarkably rich collection of fractal play, art and science, accompanied, even, by fractal music.

But what makes fractal technology so very much fun is that it is lets us play with even more faces of reality. It is the basis for much of the art of creating computer generated landscapes and, for further example, the key to the mathematically intriguing "Traveling Salesman Problem" where one can explore "the evolving field of the generation of instances of combinatorial optimization problems with known optimal solution."

Yes, and yes again, there's a lot to learn about fractals and the significant implications thereof. But don't let that distract you from the most profound of all fractal-related discoveries: fractals are fun.